


How to cope with our Fears

by concreteflour



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 05:58:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14710406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concreteflour/pseuds/concreteflour
Summary: Peter has a problem with dangerous buildings, but a hero needs to work past that.





	How to cope with our Fears

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy! If you like it, please leave a comment. I also have some other Spidey based stories, so please enjoy those as well! Thanks for reading.

PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was a real thing. Something triggers a memory of a bad event that occurred. Mood swings, emotional responses, physical outbursts, a panic attack, or even a comatose state can happen as a result. And PTSD can happen to anyone, if you are the victim of a mugging, a car accident, or a soldier on a battlefield.

Peter Parker knows he has PTSD. The nightmares are proof of that, with the cold sweats, and the violent stomach reactions. Even watching a building be demolished on TV can cause a violent response from his stomach, leaving all of its contents on the floor in front of him. One of the treatments for PTSD is to identify and avoid potential triggers that cause those memories to surface. Unfortunately, in the hero business, you don’t always have the luxury of avoiding the bad things in life. Ever since the Vulture had dropped a building on top of him, Spider-Man has had a fear of dangerous buildings. Being trapped under a few tons of concrete and rubble can cause that. But being a hero means overcoming your fears.

Spider-man had just swung in a broken window of a burning building. He had been told that one apartment had kids still trapped inside.

“Karen,” Peter said to the AI that ran his suit, “How much of the smoke and stuff can you keep out?”

“I estimate a ninety-seven percent filtering effect of the smoke and toxic gases,” was Karen’s reply.

“Three percent is this bad? How long do the kids have before the smoke gets to them?”

“Theoretically, that time should have passed all ready, but children have shown great resilience to adversity,” Karen stated.

“Can you give me any kind of fix on their location?” Peter asked.

“The thermal activity and resultant air currents have made sensors inoperable. However, I located the apartment that the parents outside stated was theirs by backtracking their identifications. It should be on the third floor, second door to the east.” Peter could feel the heat, and it was coming from many directions. His spider-sense was screaming about all the danger, but still helped him transverse the worst of the danger. He headed up the stairs as quickly as he could. 

“Jump Peter, the stairway is letting go!” Karen stated, quite loudly.

Peter jumped to the landing above, hit the wall and jumped up to the third-floor landing in one leap. With a web on the wall, just in case, he was well away from the staircase when it pulled away. With a crash, the stairway disappeared into a flaming maelstrom twenty feet below him.

“Karen, which apartment is it?”

“Apartment 34 is the second door on your left,” Karen replied.

“Hey, Karen, were you hollering at me just a moment ago?”

“It was in your best interest to hear me and understand tight away, without any need for repetition,” was the AI’s response.

“So, you were hollering at me,” Peter laughed. “Well, your point was taken.” Peter placed his hand on the door to apartment 34. It was cooler to the touch than the surrounding area, which probably meant the other side was not a raging inferno. The door was of course locked, but one swift kick rendered the door useless except for kindling, which it soon would be. He noted towels and blankets stuffed in front of the door. Smart kids, trying to keep the smoke out.

Inside Spider-Man found four children huddled together, in the far corner of the room. The oldest could not have been seven years old. They were startled when the door broke in and they hard started to cry. 

“Hey, hey. It’s going to be okay. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is here. We’re all going to get out of here together okay?” Peter had crossed the room and was kneeling in front of the terrified children. “Have any of you heard of me?”

Two of the children raised their hands, and the other two nodded.

Peter stole a glance behind him, the fire had quickly followed him into the room. It was following his path across the room, but along the ceiling. 

“Okay, I need you to stand up. I’m going to use my webs to tie you all together, and then I’m going to lower you down like you were on a rope out the window okay?”

The children started to move, except for the youngest, who started crying louder.

The oldest, a boy, picked up his baby brother, “Timmy, Spider-Man is a Hero, he’ll save us!”

Spider-Man was already busy webbing the children’s bodies together in a line. He finished with the last two, the youngest, Timmy, and the oldest who was holding onto Timmy. He ushered them over to a window and threw a quick web over the glass so it wouldn’t shatter and pushed the whole frame out of the building.

The fire was now consuming over two-thirds of the room, and the sudden influx of fresh air made the fire twice as angry in appearance.

Peter picked up the children and placed the first one on the ledge. “Don’t worry, you’re all tied together and I won’t let you fall. I will lower you down as slow as I can. Use your hands to hold onto my webbing. Help each other when you get down” With that he pushed the children out of the window and lowered them down by slowly extending his web. His feet were anchored to the window sill. The heat was intense on his back, but he couldn’t drop the children. He saw emergency workers rushing to get below the kids. 

“Peter, your skin temperature is quickly rising, you will start suffering second degree burns in less than fifteen seconds. Third degree burns will start shortly after that.”

“Almost down, almost there,” was all Peter could say.

Quickly, the first child, and then rapidly after that the last was in the arms of the fire department personnel. Without even a look behind him, Peter aimed a web at a building across the street and jumped free from the building. Landing only a few feet from the now safe children, he quickly helped free them from their webbing. The youngest, Timmy, was laughing now, and wanted to do it again. 

A quick word from the firefighters that no one else was in the building, and Spider-Man high fived the kids and swung up into the night air. Within two minutes, the building they had been in crashed to the ground.

Peter was unfazed by his actions and didn’t really think that much about what he had just done. He knew that he could help, and that others were depending on him. The only thought that he had, was it was going to take two cleanings to get the smoke smell out of his suit.

Across town, however, a billionaire and his girlfriend sat on the couch and watched the drama replay through the news. Tony called up the AI in Peter’s suit and had a replay of the event. Tony Stark had only recently found out about the building that Toomes had dropped on the kid. Watching the kid go into a burning building made his own stomach churn. “Friday, is the kid injured at all?” The fact that this had concluded shortly and had been on tape-delay before was the only reason Iron Man was not now rocketing across the city.

“It appears as if he is uninjured, and his vital signs are within normal parameters for him,” Tony’s own AI answered.

“What is the Kid doing now?”

He is approximately two blocks from the fire, and is ordering a Shawarma,” Friday answered.

“Okay, then. Thwippy seems to be getting over his issues with buildings. Friday, monitor him tonight for nightmares or other problems. Maybe we’ve gone past this trouble spot.” Tony looked over at Pepper and reached for the bowl of popcorn. “I think our spider is growing up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared. ~Edward Vernon Rickenbacker (WWI Pilot and Businessman)
> 
> Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. ~C.S. Lewis
> 
> It is easy to be brave from a safe distance. ~Aesop
> 
> Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway. ~John Wayne


End file.
